MYOPIA: SEEING ANTISEMITISM ONLY ON THE OTHER SIDE

Dear Abigail and Joe:

Over the past few years, as Jews have become increasingly concerned about rising expressions of antisemitism, I have witnessed a disturbing development. I’ve alluded to it earlier in our exchange. I want to explore it more extensively here. There is a growing tendency among those who fight antisemitism to see it as a problem that exists only on the “other” side of the political spectrum. Those on the left see Jew-hatred only on the right. Those on the right see it only on the left. Both are correct in what they see. But they are blind or rather willfully blind themselves to the antisemitism in their midst.

Consider the response to Linda Sarsour’s comments about Zionism and women who are Zionists. More than one hundred and fifty progressive Jews, among them many rabbis, denounced Sarsour’s critics. Some among them contended that she was opposed only to right-wing Zionism, without supplying supporting evidence. This does nothing but embolden anti-Zionists.1

Less forgiving was Rabbi Sharon Brouse, a prominent progressive rabbi. “There is no room in a multi-faith, multi-ethnic coalitional movement for antisemitism, homophobia, or transphobia,” she said. “Full stop. You can’t fight racism but excuse antisemitism, just as you cannot fight antisemitism while excusing and justifying racism or Islamophobia.”2 Subsequently, additional information about meetings of some leaders of the Democratic Party with Farrakhan have come to light. Here, too, the outrage has been strikingly muted.3

Progressives are not, of course, the only ones who have a less-than-stellar record of addressing racism in their midst. In the fall of 2017, details emerged regarding the far-right leanings of Steve Bannon and Breitbart News. There is no credible evidence that Bannon is himself an antisemite, but it is extremely distressing that right-wing Jewish groups that trumpet his support for Israel ignored the racism, anti-immigrant, and white nationalist views promulgated by Breitbart News when he ran it.4 He helped galvanize the emerging white nationalist movement. Nonetheless, some Jewish organizations embraced and continue to embrace him.

When the GQ reporter who wrote the critical profile of Melania Trump was being aggressively trolled by the Daily Stormer and other pro-Trump antisemites, New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman repeatedly pressed the Republican Jewish Coalition for a response. Finally, after great equivocation, it released a statement: “We abhor any abuse of journalists, commentators, and writers, whether it be from Sanders, Clinton, or Trump supporters.” Weisman marveled at the fact that the RJC could equate with “a straight face” the trollers who issued overtly antisemitic statements, threatened reporters with rape and death, and depicted them being pushed into gas chambers with members of pro-Clinton and pro-Sanders groups who had done no such things.5

A particularly bizarre phenomenon is antisemitic white supremacists who express fervent admiration for Israel. At an appearance at the University of Florida in October 2017, alt-right leader and white nationalist Richard Spencer depicted Israel as an example of the “ethno-state” he would like to create in the United States—a state in which non-whites (which include, in his determination, Jews) would be ghettoized away from white people.6 He hates Jews but loves Israel.

Being simultaneously antisemitic and pro-Israel seems to be possible in several European countries as well. In the summer of 2017, Hungarian prime minister Orbán began a concerted attack on George Soros, a billionaire Hungarian American Jew and Holocaust survivor who has funded pro-democracy and human rights groups in many former Soviet-bloc countries, including Hungary. The Hungarian government erected billboards throughout the country with a picture of a grinning Soros and the caption: “Let’s not allow George Soros to have the last laugh.” The Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities denounced this campaign, noting that “while [it was] not openly antisemitic, [it] clearly has the potential to ignite uncontrolled emotions, including antisemitism.” The Israeli ambassador to Hungary initially also forcefully condemned the posters. But then, in an unprecedented move, Israel’s Foreign Ministry ordered him to retract his criticism. It seems that Israeli leaders feared that such criticisms might impede Israel’s efforts to forge closer ties with Orbán, who is not only ardently anti-Muslim but also one of the few European leaders who supports Israel in the European Union. Soros, by contrast, has funded groups that are virulently critical of Israel’s policies. The formal end of this aspect of the campaign against Soros coincided with a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu to Hungary, during which Orbán assured Israel’s prime minister that the country will never again tolerate antisemitism. Netanyahu declared that he was “reassured” and expressed his conviction that the Hungarian government stood with the Jewish people. The Hungarian Jewish community was not as easily mollified. And, it turns out, their skepticism was justified. A few months later, the Hungarian government conducted a national survey that was ostensibly designed to assess the Hungarian people’s positions on immigration and refugees. All seven questions on the survey dealt with something it called the Soros Plan, which was supposedly secretly created by Soros in cahoots with the EU leadership. (That there was no evidence of anything like the Soros Plan was inconsequential to the government officials who wrote the survey questions.) According to the government, Soros intended to compel all EU members to “take down border protection fences and open the border for immigrants.” EU countries would be forced to accept immigrants on a “mandatory basis.” The supposed goal of this alleged plan was “to diminish the importance of the language and culture of European countries.” This unmistakably echoed the classic twentieth-century antisemitic accusation against the “cosmopolitan” European Jew (nowadays, the “globalist” Jew) who has no national roots or loyalties. Then a Hungarian government official gave a speech in Hungary’s parliament titled “The Christian Duty to Fight against the Satan/Soros Plan,” in which he described Soros as “Satan” with an agenda that “from its heart hates Christian Europe’s traditions and civilization.”7 It was classic conspiracy theory. So much for Orbán’s assurances to Netanyahu of his commitment to fighting antisemitism.

Despite all this, in February 2018, the Israeli government invited the governments of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, who have formed a cultural and political alliance known as the Visegrad Group, to hold their next meeting in Israel.8 Such a gathering would give Hungary and Poland an opportunity to slough off charges of antisemitism and Holocaust denial. (After all, would Israel host them if they were engaging in Jew-hatred?) At around the same time, an adviser to Poland’s president told reporters that the reason Israel opposed the new Polish law outlawing any assertions that Poles collaborated with Nazis during World War II was that Israel felt “shame at the passivity of the Jews during the Holocaust” and was “fighting to keep the monopoly on the Holocaust.”9

But Hungary’s Orbán did not have to wait for a Visegrad meeting in Israel to get a “clean bill of health.” In summer 2018 he visited Israel, where Netanyahu praised him as a “true friend of Israel,” and someone committed to “the need to combat antisemitism.” The Israeli prime minister said this, despite the severe opposition of the Hungarian Jewish community, Orbán’s overtly antisemitic campaign against Soros, and his denial of Hungary’s role in the decimation of the Jewish community in 1944. Orbán had praised Hungary’s World War II leader Admiral Horthy. Horthy not only passed severe antisemitic legislation that forced Jews into labor camps but also cooperated with the Germans in the deportation and annihilation of the last major wartime Jewish community in continental Europe.10

Nor did Poland have to wait for such a gathering to get a reprieve on its attempt to rewrite the history of the Holocaust. After earnestly attacking the Polish 2018 law regarding the Holocaust, Netanyahu’s government suddenly reversed course in July 2018. Poland made virtually no substantive changes in the bill, other than changing the criminal punishment to a civil crime. The leaders of the two countries signed a highly controversial joint statement stipulating that the Polish underground and wartime government in exile offered a mechanism of systematic help and support to Jewish people.” The joint statement admitted that there were cases in which Poles committed cruelties against Jews, but balanced that by noting that “numerous Poles” risked their lives to rescue Jews. It decried anti-Polonism and antisemitism.

Israel’s leading historians, including those at Yad Vashem, were infuriated. They described the statement and the revised law as full of “grave errors and deceptions.” Regarding the supposed help of the Polish government in exile to Jews, they declared that decades of research provide a “totally different picture.” Poles’ aid to Jews was “relatively rare” and attacks, even murder, of Jews “widespread.” The joint statement left all the wrongs of the original law in place. The historians decried the statement’s juxtaposition of antisemitism with so-called “anti-Polonism,” calling the latter, “fundamentally anachronistic and [having] nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism.” The unsparing criticism of the statement by Yad Vashem took on extra power given that the institution is a government-sponsored entity. One of the world’s leading Holocaust historians, Yehuda Bauer, declared the statement a “betrayal” that “hurt the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust.” He explained the Israeli government’s decision to issue this statement as entirely political. Its goal was to strengthen “the diplomatic, political, and economic ties between the Israeli government and the government of Poland.”11

When Austria’s far-right populist and anti-immigrant Freedom Party (FPO) joined the government’s ruling coalition in 2000, Israel temporarily recalled its ambassador in protest. But in recent years the FPO has touted its admiration for Zionism, supported the building of settlements in the West Bank, and advocated moving Austria’s embassy to Jerusalem. And in 2018, after scoring significant electoral victories, FPO leaders began to woo Israel in an effort “to improve relations between our [Austrian] people and the Jewish people.” In response, a Likud MP traveled to Vienna to meet with party leaders, some of whom then visited Israel. The protests of the Austrian Jewish community to the Israeli government were to no avail.12 What makes these strange alignments even more upsetting is the fact that the Polish and Hungarian governments, as well as Austria’s FPO, are all on record as having expressed strongly anti-Muslim sentiments and have made it clear to Muslim refugees that they are not welcome in their countries.13

These strange alignments can be explained in part by the shared sense of nationalism that characterizes all these governments. Poland, Hungary, and Austria have all shown themselves willing to support Israel in the UN and the EU, something the other democracies have been less than willing to do. In essence, Netanyahu has made a decision based on realpolitik, apparently willing to live with their legacy of antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and contemporary expressions of Jew-hatred in exchange for their support today. The problem is that it is a pact made with dubious partners. If they can engage in such pure expressions of antisemitism and rewriting of history today, what will they attack tomorrow? Will Hungarian children be taught a fictional account of the Holocaust, that their country was a victim of the Nazis and that it tried to save its Jews? Will the guides at Auschwitz-Birkenau be compelled to tell a fanciful history about how Poles suffered equally with Jews and, nonetheless, tried to save them? Moreover, this pact raises serious questions about Netanyahu’s claim that Israel is the primary protector of Jews worldwide against antisemitism and persecution.

Back in the United States, a meeting was held at the United Nations in March 2017 for two thousand students and pro-Israel advocates hosted by the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations and the World Jewish Congress to strategize about combating BDS activity on college campuses and in social media. While most of the speakers at the conference as well as its organizational sponsors were right-of-center, the student participants represented a broad political spectrum, including members of the left-of-center J Street U and the New Israel Fund, who strongly advocate for the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank (the “two-state solution”). When two J Street U students, one from Barnard and one from Princeton, identified themselves and asked what they should say to fellow students who oppose the occupation of the West Bank to convince them that BDS was wrong, “hisses” were heard in the large auditorium. One of the speakers, Alan Clemmons, a Republican serving in the South Carolina House of Representatives, responded with what one reporter described as “the most popular line of the day.” He told them that he personally believed that J Street was “an antisemitic organization that chooses to ignore the law and reality to push back on Israel and the Jewish nation.” His statement was met with “whoops of support,” and many in the audience rose to give him a standing ovation.14 Not one of the organizers or sponsors, including those from some of the more centrist Jewish groups, publicly condemned Clemmons’s appalling comments and the reaction to them. (They did so only in media interviews after the meeting.) Israeli government representatives who were present at the meeting declined to comment, possibly because Clemmons has been so supportive of antiboycott legislation.15

The J Street U students, who all wore identifying T-shirts, were taken aback at being labeled antisemites by fellow pro-Israel Jews, and they were also puzzled when, according to one of them, “we were asked by a security guard and one of the event organizers to cover [the J Street logos] up when we tried to take a photo. It’s unclear exactly why.”16

Even more distressing was the fact that one of the speakers at the event is a Messianic Jew—a born Jew who converted to Christianity through Jews for Jesus. He was not publicly identified as such at the gathering, and he was most likely invited because he is a lawyer who is active in the anti-BDS movement. (The fact that he is one of President Trump’s personal lawyers might have also been a factor in the invitation.) But one wonders how the organizers (who knew of his religious affiliation) were in good conscience able to reconcile among themselves the cheers he received after his rousing address with the hoots showered upon the J Street U kids.

I’m sure this all sounds pretty depressing to you. But it’s important not to give in to despair. There are positive steps that we can take. One of the most important is simply to be present. Abigail, you and your friends cannot abandon the various progressive groups with which you have been involved. You must be present as the Zionists and lovers of Israel—with all its faults—that you are. Progressive organizations cannot be convinced to descend into antisemitism by the few Jew-haters in their midst. Your continued presence among them will make it harder for them to claim victory. And you must challenge the overt antisemitism that comes from within these groups. This will not be pleasant or easy for you, but it’s important to stand up for what you believe in. I’ve watched friends in the United Kingdom who are longtime Labour Party members fully acknowledge their party’s willingness to abide the antisemitism in its midst. But they don’t leave, and instead keep jumping into the fray, uncomfortable as it may be for them.

Joe, this goes for you and me as well. We, too, must speak up, especially to colleagues who have silently—and sometimes not so silently—acquiesced to policies that are riddled with antisemitism and antithetical to the principles for which the university stands. We must be willing to fight back when we become aware of colleagues who reject Israeli students and job applicants because of their national origin. We must insist that antisemitism be treated with the same seriousness as racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. We must call out both friends and foes. If Abigail and her friends are going to put themselves on the line, we must do the same. As uncomfortable as it may be, we must also recognize that within sectors of the Muslim community, particularly in Europe, there is endemic antisemitism. We cannot ignore, rationalize, or brush it off as a consequence of events in the Middle East, as something that will disappear once the Israel/Palestine conflict is settled. We cannot dismiss it as the beliefs of misguided immigrants who don’t fully grasp the nature of Western democracy. It comes from individuals who have been raised to hate Jews. But it’s much more than an attack on Jews; it’s an attack on the broadest reaches of Western society. At the same time, we must be on guard that this not turn into a demonization of Muslims. We cannot fight hatred of Jews with hatred of other groups.

And most important, we must make people aware that antisemitism is not solely a problem of the Right or the Left, but that it exists in both arenas. It might be more institutionalized on the left, but we are also seeing it as an element in the rise of right-wing nationalism both in the United States and abroad. We cannot let those on the left—progressive people who are dedicated to righting long-standing wrongs—blind themselves to the antisemitism that has tragically insinuated itself into some areas of the political Left.

Similarly, we must forthrightly acknowledge those on the right who say they are merely trying to protect “European culture” as the antisemites and racists that they are. It was not by chance that those who gathered in Charlottesville in 2017 to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee also chanted “Jews will not replace us,” or that when Richard Spencer ended a speech at an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C., shortly after the 2016 presidential election with the cry “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory,” some of those in attendance responded with the Nazi salute. Just as you, Abigail, must call out the antisemites among those with whom you are politically aligned, so must you make sure you are heard when right-wing antisemites appear on campus. This is something that the organized Jewish community, which has responded with such vigor to the threat posed by the BDS movement, Jeremy Corbyn, and other left-wing sources must do as well. With the exception of singular events, such as Charlottesville, it has in recent years too often reacted strongly to the attacks from the left but not from the right. There has been little communal outcry about Poland, where the prime minister (the same one who signed the joint statement) told a child of Holocaust survivors that there were “Jewish perpetrators” of the Holocaust. There has been relative silence about the Ukraine, where individuals with neo-Nazi ties have gained political clout, or in this country, where people with white supremacist affiliations have increased access to government officials.

There are Jewish leaders on both the right and the left who have argued that in the realm of public advocacy you cannot agree with your allies on everything. I concede that this is a reality and that politics does, indeed, sometimes make for strange bedfellows. But I cannot make common cause with putative allies who, deep down, harbor contempt for me and my group—or for any other racial, religious, or identity group, for that matter. My self-respect, my abhorrence of prejudice, and my recognition of their attempts to dismantle the democratic institutions that I love preclude any alliances with them.

This will be a lonely and unpleasant fight, especially when it entails taking issue with those whom we have long called allies. But if we continue to speak the truth, not just to those with whom we disagree, but to our compatriots as well, we will emerge with our values and our self-respect intact, our voices heard, and—we must continue to hope—our goals achieved.

Yours,

DEL